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I am a very regular customer for Picsolve, I purchased over 100 ORP last year:

My fridge:

The montage my niece made for me:

I contacted Picsolve at the end of January asking about the Photopass, but did not receive a reply. On Saturday when I was at Chessington, we got what had to be one of the best pictures on the Bubbleworks, so I wanted to buy a photopass, but these were not available to buy. So I contact Picsolve to ask why not as not being tight, the pictures above prove that if something is the right price then I will be more than happy to spend the cash.

This is the reply I got from the Marketing Manager:

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your e-mail, very sorry that we have taken so long to reply, we are now in a position to confirm our offering for 2013.

As of main season opening we will be offering guests the Value Combo. Similar to the photopass but with a choice of FOUR brilliant items Vs previous years where there was only a photo, keyring or magnet available. The Value Combo includes 4 vouchers to be used on selected rides for just £20, effectively giving guests photos for £5 each which I am sure you will agree is a great discount. In the interim, we are running the 2 for £12 offer. I am not sure if you are a passholder but we also offer a whopping 20% discount to passholders on a range of photography gifts.

I hope this helps make this more affordable for you and the family. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

Thanks,

Jessica Smith

Marketing Manager

Doesn't this sound great? Well no it isn't it is a hidden 20% increase in price!

Last year I could purchase 5 photos for £20, this year it is only 4 photo's for £20 (Of course you have MAP discount as well) but are they really that stupid that they are giving you less for the same price? I know you can get a few more items rather than photos, key rings and magnets, but if I wanted something else I would happily pay extra.

I also am very disappointed that Picsolve do not do a download only option. I would be more than happy to buy download only for £2 a time.

What are your thoughts, the 20% increase in price or should I say getting less for your money will mean no money spent by me this year. Which is a shame as I was looking forward to getting at least 5 photos tomorrow and another 10 in early March when I am on the park with people who have never been before.

I had wondered what was going on yesterday when I saw the '2 for £12' offer , which quite frankly, is pants.I hold my hands up to not buying ride photos often as I am the least photogenic person in the world but for that reason I think I probably wouldn't have noticed them switching the offer.. I reckon that is how they will get away with it as the majority pf people probably don't purchase often enough to notice the difference in price

It is just down to pure greed, Picsolve and Merlin have seen how successful the digital downloads have been and just want to cash in on it. But this is so short sighted and is flawed in many ways. Which I will explain:

Why they should offer them free of charge:-You have already brought the photo!-Good for guests as this is a great way to save your memories and use them on other items, for example last year I converted many of my ORP in to Mugs, a calendar, personalised magnet-It is FREE advertising, yes what is the first thing people do with a good ORP, they upload it to Facebook or other online sites and share them. This in return offers FREE advertising to Merlin and the park. So if somebody had 50 friends on Facebook, 1 upload will have a target audience of up to 50 people.-If something feels good value for money, you will buy more and more, the fact I purchased over 100 shows if priced correctly people will be happy to spend more and more money-Or just offer a digital only download for £2 each, I'm sure more guests will take them up on this

Why they will not benefit from this charge:-Guests will take my approach and say its too expensive, then won't buy-The guests are getting a much, much worse deal than last year-People simply won't pay extra for the digital download when they have spent £8 on a photo-As thousands and thousands of people will not have digital copies I doubt they will scan this and upload them, so Merlin loose out on the free advertising.-People who choose to scan of take a photo with their phone will have a very poor quality image, not as good as the origion-Guests will only feel ripped off after paying the expensive park entry, car parking, the whole fastrack then the ORP will just be the icing on top of the cake.

This winds me up so much as they had it all working perfectly now just due to price they just show they want the cash and not to provide a good service. When I look at the food outlets, they do a fantastic job and have their act together. I am more than happy to buy food at the park as the price and quality is spot on.

So let me get this straight, last year I had 5 photos for £20 including the digital download, meaning I paid £4 per photo.

This year I get 4 photos for £20 and have to pay £2 for the digital download - this means for the same as last year I'd be paying £7 per photo - almost double?!

Now that's what I call a total disregard for customer service. It costs AT and Picsolve pennies to produce the photos (without staffing costs) and nothing for the digital downloads. At very least they should offer digital downloads only, I'd be happy to to pay a few quid for that.

After Visiting both Thorpe Park and Chessington in the last few days I have noticed the next big rip off stunt which Picsolve/Merlin are pulling. I'm so angry over this I will be writing to Watchdog.

First of all look at the items you can get made as a photo, keyrings, phone cases etc etc all clearly priced up, then look at the big TV which tells you can get 4 photos for £25.

Then look closely, check, then check again. How much is a single photo? Well any Merlin park regular will tell you it is £8 or 2 for £12. But this is not listed ANYWHERE on any of the photo kiosks when I visited at Chessington and Thorpe.

So if you ask the person selling the photos the simple question "How much are the photos?" What would be the answer you would expect to hear? Well it is of course £8, but this is not what they are telling their guests.

Only one person has told me the true price of their photos on two visits, which is appalling...

So I made a point of asking this question on every ride I went on and I got the same answer.

Me "How much are the photos"Answer "£10, you also get a free digital download with this or you can get 4 for £25"

Anyone see the deception here? Yes they are automatically quoting the higher price which in turn gives them £2 additional revenue and not the true price of £8 and then giving you the option to pay an extra £2 for the digital version.

How insulting considering I was getting 5 photos with digital downloads for only £16 last year with my MAP discount.

Me "How much are the photos"Answer "£10, you also get a free digital download with this or you can get 4 for £25"

Anyone see the deception here? Yes they are automatically quoting the higher price which in turn gives them £2 additional revenue and not the true price of £8 and then giving you the option to pay an extra £2 for the digital version.

How insulting considering I was getting 5 photos with digital downloads for only £16 last year with my MAP discount.

I was told at Thorpe and Towers that you can't get MAP discount on the 4 picture packages as they're already discounted in the deal...

Picsolve terms and conditions have just changed. From now on they will only keep purchased pictures accessible online for 90 days. Any existing pictures need to be downloaded within the next 30 days (by May 30th), after which they will be deleted from Picsolve servers.

Seems a somewhat heavy handed interpretation of GDPR rules, but there we go.

Unfortunately there isn't a Download All option, and you have to manually download every single image you want to keep.